


Void

by Aurora077



Series: Communication [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Deserves Better, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Needs a Hug, Angst, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Despair, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Turmoil, F/M, Family, Feelings, Friendship, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Hurt, Loneliness, Love, Masks, New York, Pain, Perfect, Plagg - Freeform, Regret, Solitude, TRYING YOUR BEST, TV Special: Miraculous World: New York, facade - Freeform, perfection has it's price, playing a role, trying to please everyone, void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28531050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurora077/pseuds/Aurora077
Summary: Adrien Agreste was the perfect son. He had perfect grades, perfect looks, a perfect personality. Perfection however, has its price.NY Special.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Nino Lahiffe, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Plagg
Series: Communication [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1942273
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	Void

Title: Void

Summary: Adrien Agreste was the perfect son. He had perfect grades, perfect looks, a perfect personality. Perfection however, has its price. 

Post NY Special.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.

* * *

Adrien Agreste was the perfect son. He had perfect grades, perfect looks, a perfect personality. (Or, so everyone but his father thought. Ironic given that he was the very reason Adrien even strived for perfection.) What nobody ever talked about however, was that perfection had its price. 

And Adrien was a perfect client. He paid his dues in full.

Who even was Adrien Agreste? 

Model…

Son…

Classmate... 

Or, simply a doll...made to be seen and not heard.

Perfection was a sham after all. Nobody was perfect. He knew that better than most. 

(Father would disagree, but then again, Father didn’t agree with him about anything.)

For ages he had tried to please everyone, and in doing so, he ended up losing himself. 

When his mother had disappeared (ran away, people whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear, ran away from her cold husband and their cold home) he’d thought if only he had been a better son maybe she would have stayed (or would have taken him with her...a thought he’d never dared to utter, even to himself.) He still had Father and so unable to do anything about his mother, he tried to be the best he could be so that Father wouldn’t leave him too. 

What a waste, he scoffed internally. Father couldn’t even be bothered to see him in person, preferring to communicate via Nathalie. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a meal with him. And the only time Father bothered to talk to him in person and without an appointment was to let him know what else he was disappointed about. What else he thought his son lacked. How much of a disgrace Adrien was to the Agreste name.

He reclined his incredibly comfortable seat and just lay there staring at the ceiling of the plane. 

The private plane.

The private plane that he was on because once again Father couldn’t just let him have a single moment of normalcy. One moment to be a regular boy on a class trip with his friends. 

Although this time maybe it was a blessing in disguise. He didn’t know how he would have been able to hold up if he had to be around his classmates and pretend that everything was okay. Because it was not okay.

_ He  _ was not okay.

And he wouldn’t even be able to explain to them why. 

He was grateful to be alone on the plane. No Father, no Nathalie, no Gorilla. (No Plagg either, whispered the voice in his head.) With nobody around Adrien was finally able to let the facade of perfection drop. 

For the first time since he had been granted the honour of being Chat Noir, he was well and truly alone.

His eyes burned but the tears wouldn’t come. The hurt felt deeper than that. He was almost numb. It was as if his brain told his body  _ ‘not right now’ _ . His mind knew he wouldn’t be able to handle all the emotions brought on by the past few hours. It was too soon. The wounds too fresh. Too deep.

There was a void within him, and all feeling got sucked into the blackness of it. There was a gaping hole in his chest where his heart had once been (and coincidentally where Plagg’s camembert had always been hidden). If he had remembered it, he would have given it to Plagg as one last gift before parting ways. 

But as it was, at the moment of renouncing him all Adrien was thinking about was how he had let Paris down, almost seriously injured his partner and had all but killed someone. It didn’t matter that the only reason Aeon had been destroyed was that she was in fact not actually alive. She was alive in all the ways it counted. She was more alive it seemed, than Adrien Agreste. More loved too. 

“I am here to take captive those who are loved by no one!” Solitude had said. And by that he had most certainly meant Adrien. Between him and Marinette, well Adrien knew which one was loved. Adrien had fans and he had friends. But at the end of the day his fans and his friends only knew so much about him. (In no small part thanks to his father, his friends would always have to be subjected to Perfect Agreste rather than Just Adrien.) And after all how could you love someone you didn’t know? 

Ladybug would argue that he didn’t know  _ her _ but loved her anyway. But that was different. He may not have known her name or her face but he  _ did _ know her. Conversely, everyone knew his name and his face, yet nobody knew him. 

Solitude was aptly named wasn’t he? Adrien was already in solitude’s grasp long before he ever came to New York.

Especially since there was no more Plagg, who had served to be Adrien’s one sliver of freedom, and also the only being who had known him, truly known him... in and out of the mask. His most cherished companion. He was gone and Adrien was the one who threw him away. 

He hoped Plagg could forgive him one day, and that whoever Ladybug chose to replace him as Chat Noir would treat him well and be able to afford the camembert he so loved. Losing Plagg, even if it was by his own doing, would take him a while to get over. He’d never said it but he loved the kwami fiercely. Not just for the powers and freedom he granted him but for the way Plagg knew how to cheer him up when he got too down and how Plagg would curl up next to him at night and purr until he fell asleep. Plagg was sarcastic and blunt but he was genuine and cared about Adrien a whole lot more than literally everybody else in his life. He encouraged him to come out of his shell and live a little. And he knew if Plagg had his way he wouldn’t be kept in the dark about anything. Plagg looked out for him in his own way. Adrien didn’t have anyone else like Plagg. 

Sure sometimes Plagg’s advice could get him into trouble, but it was Adrien who chose to accept that advice. He should have told Ladybug he was going to be away on a class trip. He was just so scared that she’d lose trust in him because he had given her his word. In the end it didn’t matter, he’d lost her trust anyway. The way he saw it, he wouldn’t have won no matter what he’d chosen to do. It’s not as if he could explain to Ladybug why he had agreed to protect Paris only to turn around and say he couldn’t. She didn’t want to know. Identities and all that. (And clearly, Plagg didn’t disagree because he wouldn’t have encouraged Adrien to stay quiet if he had thought she’d be fine with him going… Given that  _ Plagg _ knew who Ladybug was, Adrien chose to trust his advice. Not like he could have said no to his father when he made up his mind anyway. Adrien would  _ not _ have won in this situation.)

Plagg had ranted and raved about how much easier things would be for both of them if they didn’t have these secrets in the way. Adrien agreed but it wasn’t his call to make. She was the guardian. And if even after all that she didn’t want him to know who she was...she didn’t want to know who  _ he _ was, well there was nothing he or Plagg could do about it. 

He didn’t forget that though he’d given up his miraculous, she hadn’t cared to look at him. She  _ still  _ didn’t want to know. He hadn’t expected her to stop him or beg him to stay. He knew he’d screwed up and that she’d lost faith in him. But even at the end she hadn’t wanted to know him. To know who had stood by her side all this time... or who had failed her. 

But anyway, Adrien mused, it was inevitable. He was bound to screw up and lose his miraculous one way or another. As a result of Adrien Agreste being perfection incarnate, Chat Noir was carefree and subsequently, careless, as Ladybug would attest. 

It was his carelessness that led to Paris being severely damaged. It was his carelessness that lost him his lady’s trust. His carelessness that would have injured her. His carelessness that erased the lights from Aeon’s eyes, permanently if not for the Miracle Cure.

Ladybug would be better off without him, he knew. She needed someone who was careful and responsible, like she was. 

And that couldn’t be Adrien. Adrien loved her too much to be careful when it came to her. As Chat he would often throw himself in front of blows meant for her. And while he would never stop protecting her, he also knew it made her job harder having to fight him alongside the akuma. Another Chat Noir with less feelings invested might be able to find a better solution. But that Chat was not him. Try as he might he could not stop how he felt about her, even when he had other girls around him who he was sure he could come to love if she wasn’t in the picture. 

Marinette’s face came to mind unbiddenly and his sorrow intensified. He’d been so grateful to her. She’d managed against all odds to convince his father to let him come and it was for nothing really. All he’d ended up doing was causing damage as Chat and leaving anyway as Adrien. He meant what he said to her. He would have loved to have spent more time with her (and their friends).

For once he felt like he truly belonged and could be with them as just another kid. She’d made that possible. He’d wanted nothing more for so long than to be able to be a better friend to her. He always felt like he made her uncomfortable which was the last thing he wanted, so for her to want him there meant the world to him. She was such a good friend. 

She’d looked devastated when his father’s car pulled up at the hotel. Sans Father of course...Adrien didn’t count the tablet with his head as him. Though the result was the same regardless of his physical presence or lack thereof. Adrien had to leave. It seemed he was always leaving behind the people he cared about. Though it was no sweat off his father’s back. Adrien shouldn’t care about people he didn’t approve of and so had no right to miss them. 

He knew Marinette wouldn’t be able to sway his father a second time, but he could admit, even if only to himself, that he was a little sad she hadn’t said anything to him before he left. He’d sort of wished she would tell him to stay or that she would miss him. But that was unfair to Marinette. It was thanks to her he could even come to begin with.

And he knew what he really wished was for Ladybug to have said she would miss him, even if she didn’t want him to stay. He knew she didn’t love him, but he hoped he was at least her friend. One who at the very least could understand some of the burden of a double life. (Or in his case, triple really.)

He chuckled darkly. ‘How naive of me’, he thought. He was merely a work colleague and a poor one at that.  _ Former _ work colleague that is. 

His heart clenched painfully. It would be unbearable to see her working with another. It would devastate him to go back to being a random civilian to her, when she inevitably saved him from future attacks. He wouldn’t be able to help her or to even show that she could come to him for anything, because he shouldn’t know her, not really. 

She’d know Adrien Agreste, whose perfect face was displayed across Paris on billboards. Adrien Agreste would know Ladybug as Paris’s superheroine. Ladybug and Adrien Agreste knew each other as celebrities did and nothing more. The one perk to his face on billboards may just be that at the very least, he was someone she would recognise and remember even if only as a celebrity. If she couldn’t remember him at all...if he was invisible to her...Adrien didn’t know what would become of him. 

God, he would miss her so, so much. Before she became the guardian they had had a lot of moments where she would banter with him and even playfully tease him. They talked about insignificant things but it gave him joy. Nino was great and he was more himself with Nino than anyone else as Adrien, but it was with Ladybug that he felt safe and happy enough to let go of all of his inhibitions. She was one of his dearest friends, he had meant what he said to her the day she rejected his dinner. He truly valued her friendship. But as he was coming to realise, Adrien Agreste may not know so much about relationships. She had never called him  _ her  _ friend after all. She seemed to be a well adjusted person beyond the mask. And she was so amazing, she probably had an active social life. Who wouldn’t want to be her friend? She wouldn’t need his friendship like he needed hers. And she certainly didn’t crave it the way he did.

He didn’t know a lot of things that people his age should know about the world and people. Nino did his best to guide him but again, Father hated Nino so there was only so much he could do. Plagg tried too but Plagg wasn’t exactly human and didn’t understand things himself sometimes. 

He felt like his thoughts were all jumbled and going around in circles. His emotions were too heavy. It made him glad he wasn’t in Paris. He didn’t want to know what kind of akuma he could become with the amount of hurt he was currently nursing.

Thinking of her sobs when she saw the destruction done to Paris that she couldn’t reverse… because of him...well it solidified that he had made the right decision. It may have been the most painful thing he had ever had to do, but he loved her and he never wanted to put her in that kind of position again. He would put her, put  _ Paris _ , before himself. He was accustomed to doing that anyway. He hid away his needs and desires to be what the ones he loved needed him to be. 

And if what they needed..what they  _ wanted _ , was perfect then by George he would give them perfection....

Or stand aside for someone who could. 

  
  
  



End file.
